Health Insurance New Jersey

Who can afford health insurance these days? Although almost impossible to answer figures by the Kaiser Family Foundation can give us a clue. According to their 2006 study, 47 million Americans do not have health care, a large percentage of this comes from lower and middle class families. The study reveals that two thirds of this 47 million are from poor families add on to that another 16% percent who live just about two or three times the poverty level. This tells us that a significant number of Americans just cannot afford health care.

The figures translate correspondingly to New Jersey’s populace. According to recent studies one million residents in New Jersey do not have health insurance. Now more than ever there is a convincing need for health insurance in New Jersey for low income families.

In order to provide health insurance in New Jersey to low income families the state government has had an aggressive campaign towards universal health care, a plan which New Jersey governor Jon S. Corzine hopes to achieve in the next two years. Health insurance in New Jersey for low income families is achieved by lowering the threshold for families to qualify under a Family Care program that is government subsidized.

Likewise as the number of uninsured children is also growing, New Jersey is fully supportive of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or S-Chip program that provides health insurance in New Jersey for low income families with children.

Recently the S-Chip has planned on increasing the number of registered children to 10 million from its current 6 million, unfortunately President George Bush has been a staunch advocate, vetoing a bill that approved this increase. This makes is harder to provide health insurance in New Jersey for low income families.

However recently Gov. Corzine announced a new program that the state of New Jersey entered with private insurance company Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield that aims to provide health insurance to children particularly health insurance in New Jersey for low income families with kids.

The program that will launch in 2008 and as much as 15,000 children can benefit from these “drastically reduced rates.” This is the type of health insurance in New Jersey that low income families need.

This is perhaps the first case that a private company has worked together with the government to provide health insurance in New Jersey to low income families and it is a program that is expected to be studied by other states that have similar commitments to health care and want to provide, like New Jersey health insurance to low income families.

This is also the first time that the state will not be spending for a program such as this. Instead Horizon has offered to shoulder the estimated $1 million dollar loss that is expected to come in the first year.

The rates are indeed low. Private companies charge an average of $400 per month for families with one child. Under this Horizon plan, residents will only need to pay horizon $137 a month for the same plan, now that’s health insurance in New Jersey that even low income families can afford.